Intro

Published: 2023.12.07

• I’ve been getting back into reading as a habit and this was a blessing of a 2nd book to pick up. “Refreshing” and “straightforward” while not being too in your face were the descriptions that came to mind while reading. Coming back to pick up this book each day was always easy to do, I believe I finished this in 3-4 days and was a bit sad when it was over.
• There are thoughts in here that I wouldn’t have considered and maybe had some aversion to (“Productize yourself”) and others that hit the spot just right, being the advice I exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.
• Overall, I’d recommend most people I meet to read this book and think they’d enjoy it as well as come away with something to positively influence their life. I will read this again. If interested, you can also get a free digital copy.
• (Random side note, I absolutely love the feel of the pages)

Quotes and Reflections

Part I: Wealth

• Specific knowledge p.33
  • Will feel like play to you, work to others
  • Is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion, not whatever’s hot right now
• “Productize yourself” p.37
  • In “The Book of Five Rings” a concept Musashi brings up is the group of people who “separate the flower from the fruit”, those who focus on making pretty outputs instead of functional, practical outputs; especially those who start martial arts schools for making money as opposed to people who know how to fight. His reasoning for this being wrong is that if you’re focusing on how to make money then you’re not focusing on how to learn to fight; in the words of George Lucas, “your focus determines your reality”.
  • This made a lot of sense to me and generally buy it, so hearing the advice “make a product out of yourself” hits me with agony, “no”.
  • p. 38 “If you’re looking toward the long-term goal of getting wealthy, you should ask yourself, ‘Is this authentic to me? Is it myself that I am projecting?’ And then, ‘Am I productizing it? Am I scaling it?’”
    • Also note, p.37, “When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t hat you were seeking in the first place.”
  • Is it authentic to me? It’s hard for me to disagree with this. Am I productizing it? This is more slippery, because you’re now influencing the world. Aside from gaining wealth, is releasing my products good for the world? It’s hard for me to know the answer this, but does the world have nothing to be gained from you? I’m tempted to say without releasing products to the world you have no instances to test whether or not that’s true. I lean towards saying, “yeah, release stuff” but am cautious.
• “If you go to the library and there’s a book you cannot understand, you have to dig down and say, ‘What is the foundation required for me to learn this?’ ’” p.45
• “…you should be very thoughtful and realize in most things (relationships, work, even in learning) what you’re trying to do is find the thing you can go all-in on to earn compound interest.” “…when you find the 1 percent of your discipline which will not be waster…go all-in and forget about the rest.” p.49
• “The people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power.” p.51
  • Relevant talk from Steve Jobs on taking accountability.
• “By doing things for their own sake, I did them at their best.” p.56
  • Paul Graham certainly agrees: “How to do what you love”, and from Great Hackers “If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects (unless your family will starve otherwise), and in return, you’ll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job.”
• “Spend more time making the big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.” p. 74 and with it, “You have to say no to everything and free up your time so you can solve the important problems. Those three are probably the biggest ones.” p.75
• “The winners of any game are the people who are so addicted they continue playing even as the marginal utility from winning declines.” p.81
  • I like contradictory advice. The typical thing I hear is “beware of diminishing returns”, but if you love it on that level then the returns you’re gaining are from the act itself. Typing that out seems so obvious, but I would’ve (and very likely have) overlooked it because of “diminishing returns”.
• “If you’re not getting promoted through the ranks, it gets a lot harder to catch up later in life. It’s good to be in a smaller company early because there’s less of an infrastructure to prevent early promotion.” p.82
  • One of my first jobs was working at a Production company that acted like a startup (just wasn’t in the Bay so wasn’t called that). I knew almost nothing about live audio (though had an interest in it) and within a couple of years had become one of the lead engineers in the company. This resonates with me strongly.
• “For someone who is early in their career (and maybe even later), the single most important thing about a company is the alumni network you’re going to build. Think about who you will work with and what those people are going on to do.” p.82
• “Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.” p.85
• " ‘Clear thinker’ is a better compliment than ‘smart’ " p.95
• “I would rather understand the basics really well than memorize all kinds of complicated concepts I can’t stitch together and can’t rederive from the basics.” p.96
  • So incredibly agree with this. Complex things are just simple things combined. Having only a complex thing memorized means you can’t move from that fact, conversely when you know exactly how a system is built or complex math topic is put together you can break it down into its parts and use it for other ideas and situations. What good is information that doesn’t generalize? I’d rather have a equation that gives me all right answers than a data point that’s right in a specific circumstance (in most cases).
• “The more desire I have for something to work out a certain way, the less likely I am to see the truth. Especially in business,if something isn’t going well, I try to acknowledge it publicly and I try to acknowledge it publicly in front of my co-founders and friends and co-workers.” p.98
  • I’ve noticed in the past that when I tell someone else about problems I’m struggling with, they start getting better. Frankly this is difficult for me and I haven’t done it enough times to tell what’s going on, but it has felt like magic. I don’t understand why.
  • If I were to setup a system to make sure I do this in the future, I determine and then ask some trusted friends to be people I could call when I need to express this.
  • I wonder if this is some of the built in benefits of having a confession booth.
• “It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas.” …. “It’s actually really important to have empty space. If you don’t…you’re not going to be able to think…You’re not going to be able to make good judgements. I also encourage taking at least one day a week…where you just have time to think”. p. 98
  • This is hard to define for me. An experiment I did in college was having one day a week where I wouldn’t turn on my computer and that was a peaceful result. I had room in my life for me as opposed to what I was seeing on screen. But having time “just to think” doesn’t immediately make sense to me, it’s possible he means “have the space to let thoughts come to you”? I do agree with this, how much does an overflowing cup hold?
• “You absolutely need habits to function. You cannot solve every problem in life as if it is the first time it’s thrown at you.” p.101
  • I really like the word “resolution” as if you have a solution that you can reapply (re-solution). What’s nice about this is that you put time into solving a problem with some series of steps, and then when you recognize that problem you just apply the same steps; it’s only execution as opposed to thinking through EVERYTHING again and having to rederive everytime, you can take care of your problems in an expected fashion.
    • This does seem to run slightly counter to “being able to rederive everything from first principles” mentioned above, but also you don’t want to HAVE to draw up new battle plans when the enemy is coming at you. And you especially don’t want to have this happen everytime. Get ahead of the curve.
  • In “The Great Mental Models” it talks about this same concept in the chapter on “Algorithms”; (“A series of steps to accomplish some goal.”) Not having to reinvent the wheel everytime.
  • From Alan J. Perlis’ programming epigrams, “10. Get into a rut early: Do the same process the same way. Accumulate idioms. Standardize. The only difference(!) between Shakespeare and you was the size of his idiom list - not the size of his vocabulary.”
• “If they wrote it to make money, don’t read it.” p.118
  • Touches on my issue with “Productize yourself”, I agree with him more now ## Part II: Happiness
• “When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you. When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.” p.145
• “At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.” p.147
• “The most important trick to being happy is to realize that happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make.” p.148
• His steps for changing habits: (p.151)
  • Pick one thing. Cultivate a desire. Visualize it.
  • Plan a sustainable path.
  • Identify needs, triggers, and substitutes.
  • Tell your friends.
  • Track meticulously.
  • Self-discipline is a bridge to a new self-image.
  • Bake in the new self-image. It’s who you are — now.
• “First, you know it. Then, you understand it. Then, you can explain it. Then, you can feel it. Finally, you are it.” p.151
• “Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most.” p.159
• “If you’ve got a fuzzy basket of ten or fifteen different priorities, you’re going to end up getting none of them.” p.165
• “The ability to singularly focus is related to the ability to lose yourself and be present, happy and (ironically) more effective.” p.176
• “Impatience with the actions, patience with the results.” p. 182
• “Much of finding great relationships, great coworkers, great lovers, wives, husbands, is finding other people where your values line up. If your values line up, the little things don’t matter.” p.198